UMN MapServer

1
UMN MapServer

• Past, Present and Future

2
MapServer Timeline
3
Themes

• Community
• Cartography
• Performance/Analysis
• Data In
• Information Out

• OGC Interoperabity
• MapScript
• Client-side Development
• Server-side Management

4
Community

• The present
• June 03 800 users, June 04 1,200 users
• 19 developers, 15 documenters
• core of very experienced users
• new users are inexperienced in GIS, web
  application development, or both
• The future
• hopefully all those numbers go up
• there is a niche to be filled in training and
  documentation

5
Cartography

• Recent work
• new style objects
• support for GD anti-aliased line drawing
• cartographic lines
• graticule objects
• Future work
• labeling enhancements polygon label point
  computation, MapText label engine support, label
  prioritization
• symbol set re-write

6
Performance/Analysis

• Recent work
• non-8bit classification support for rasters
• buffered polygon queries
• connection pooling for SDE
• spatial/temporal tiling extension
• Future work
• integration of GEOS geometry engine
• reworking query interface to eliminate
  unnecessary passes through datasources
• mapfile tokens, parse arbitrary chunks (or the
  whole file) as strings

7
Data In

• Recent work
• Support for SDE versioned databases
• Simple MySQL feature support
• (indirect) GDAL/OGR drivers for OpenNDAP
• Future work
• Oracle Spatial (the Brazilians are back!) support
  brought to the same point as PostGIS and SDE
• real-time relational joins
• SDE joins (similar to PostGIS support)

8
Information Out

• Recent work
• 24-bit image output
• PDF and SWF output
• shpxy tag for query processing
• join support for dbf, csv and MySQL
• Future work
• map rotation (CVS)
• raster queries (CVS)
• shpxy support for dynamic feature thinning

9
OGC Interoperability

• Recent work
• WFS client/server
• OGC Filter support
• WMS SLD support
• Future work
• WCS 1.0.0 server (CVS)
• WMS/WCS compliance (darn square pixels)
• integration work with complimentary packages like
  GeoServer for WFS/WFS-T support

10
MapScript

• Recent work
• tons of refactoring
• unification of Swig and PHP-based APIs
• exposure of style and symbol objects
• Future work
• decent Java and .Net wrappers
• exposing OWS interfaces
• a thread-safe version of the C API
• PHP5 to SWIG or not to SWIG

11
Client-side Development

• Recent work
• MapClient, jBox/dBox, ROSA
• web mapping frameworks like DMS Chameleon,
  ZMapServer and Moxi Media IMF (misclassified)
• mapserv CGI cookie support
• Future work
• (pet project) Eclipse plugin for authoring
  MapServer applications
• really slick UIs from several small companies
  built on top of the MapServer engine

12
Server-side Management

• Recent work
• distributions MS4W, Debian Linux and
  GIS-Knoppix
• application managers like MapDesk, MapLab and
  AveIN!
• Future work
• non-Windows installers

13
Challenges

• Prioritizing all that future work - money talks
• Project governance
• Competition from
• other OpenSource GIS projects
• commercial outfits
• Keeping pace as technology advances
• Functional voids like routing and geocoding

14
Thank You!